"The Rising Sun" is Aubade Poetry? Not Quite

    The use of metaphysical dialogue in John Donne poetry is what gives him his originality. It is then  accurate to infer that Donne uses metaphysical themes to change the lyrical “aubade” form of poetry forever with “The Sun Rising”. The Norton Anthology understands “aubade” to partially mean “a lover’s dawn song or lyric” (A51). For this requirement, Donne succeeds as the poem is about the rising hours of the morning. However, the definition continues by claiming that in aubade poetry the lover “bewails the arrival of the day and the necessary separation of the lovers” (A51). Due to this definition, “The Sun Rising” should not be included as a good example of aubade poetry.
    The first contradiction between “The Sun Rising” and the definition of “aubade” was the description of aubade including a lover bewailing. In the Oxford-English Dictionary “bewailing” is defined as “to utter wailings or cries of sorrow over”. There is no point in the poem when the narrator is wailing or crying. The narrator is instead very confident and defiant to the sun. The narrator says “Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride” (7). The narrator feels confident enough to tell the sun what to do. He feels so self-assured in the power of love that he believes “I could eclipse and cloud them (the suns beams) with a wink” (13). This does not sound like a bewailing lover but quite the opposite.  The definition of aubade also claims that the poetry is supposed to have a “necessary separation of lovers”. Nonetheless, near the end of the poem is where the lovers seem more connected that ever. “That’s done in warming us. Shine here to us” (29-30) the narrator claims as he uses the word us to prove that the love he shares is much more powerful than the “busy old fool” (1).  One could even go so far as claiming that the narrator is mocking the sun. It should not be considered a stretch that the title “The Sun Rising” could easily be inferred as a sexual pun. He calls the sun a “saucy pedantic wretch” (5) The second stanza of the poem, with a clearly ocular theme, claims that the narrator’s lover could blind the sun. If this this doesn’t elicit a confident tone than nothing will.
    After claiming how much “The Sun Rising” is not a good example of aubade poetry, I found it only fair to find a good example of what could be considered aubade poetry. I had to look no further than the poem titled “Aubade” (seriously) by Philip Larkin. This poem commands the tone of real fear and sorrow of the upcoming dawn that aubade poetry should incorporate. Bewailing is a clear theme of this poem as the narrator claims “Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how” (5-6). Finding two lovers in Larkin’s poem was much harder than in Donne’s but after examination the lover’s seem to be the narrator and time, and in this sense, there most definitely is a “necessary separation”. Read Larkin's poem to try asking yourself what should be considered aubade poetry.

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Philip Larkin